Increases in computer network connection speeds and bandwidth allow data processing systems to offer richer data content. Web sites use increasing Internet connection speeds to provide richer and higher bandwidth content. Computer data content in the form of Internet data elements, such as pictures and videos, are commonly used in web pages to serve the purpose of increasing the users' experience. Web data elements are also being used increasingly in email communications. However, the improvement in data content delivery may also be detrimental to users, as bandwidth improvements come at a cost. Accessing the Internet via mobile phones is a particular area that suffers from high cost and low performance connections. Often users are charged by the number of Megabytes downloaded. Since the average web page is steadily growing in size, users of such types of connections are finding that downloads are taking longer and are more expensive than previously.
A current client-side solution to reduce the cost of viewing any web page is the option to not download pictures or videos. Many web browsers support this but since so many websites rely on images to construct menus for navigation the user finds that a lot of websites become unusable. Intimately the user has lost value from the experience of using the site.
Additionally, some web sites and web based applications provide a mechanism by which the client only retrieves data for the visible portion of the page. Although this behaviour is very helpful to the user of a high cost connection, it has to be implemented on a per application basis. Since most website providers do not code such behaviour into their sites and most users would not choose to limit their browsing to the sites that have had it implemented, this solution does little to reduce the overall cost of using the connection and serves mainly to increase the performance of web site into which it has been implemented.
Therefore, there is a need in the art to address the aforementioned problem.